Disclaimer: Obviously I do not own Harry Potter, otherwise I'd be a billionaire. The characters belong to JK Rowling.
Chapter 1
Ever since he'd arrived at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry had been busy cleaning up the dusty townhouse. Mrs. Weasley had made sure to keep everyone busy with one task or another. The last time Harry had cleaned this much was when he had accidently broken Aunt Petunia's lamp when he was eight, and his aunt had made him scrub the garage.
The attic was definitely the dirtiest place in the entire house. Harry, Hermione and the Weasley kids had been cleaning it since the morning, and it still hadn't made a difference.
"Achoo," Harry sneezed rather loudly as he dusted the mouldy deep red velvet curtains. Ron laughed at Harry's ungraceful sneeze, earning him a dirty look from his green eyed best friend. Turning around, Harry angrily tugged at the curtains. Something moved against his right foot. Looking down, Harry found a wooden box hiding behind the curtains.
When he picked it up, Harry felt something shift inside the box as he examined it from side to side. The box was made of a dark brown wood, and it was, like everything else in the house, covered in layers of grey dirt.
"Be careful with that!" Hermione warned. She came behind Harry to look over his shoulder at the box. "It might be cursed. Or have something awful inside it."
"All the more reason to open it then," George came over, abandoning the lamp he was cleaning.
"Go on then, lets see what's inside it," Fred nudged Harry with his elbow. Ginny and Ron too seem interested in the mysterious box. Hermione bit her lip nervously, clearly disagreeing with everybody else. Harry looked away from Hermione, not wanting her to make him feel guilty for what he was about to do.
Harry slid the top of the box to the right, and held his breath. He swallowed nervously, then looked up at his friends. His gaze, of its own accord, landed on Ginny.
"It's…a diary," Harry finished lamely. Hermione and the Weasleys exchanged a nervous look.
"Harry…," Hermione began in a warning voice.
"I know, I know," Harry replied, shutting the box close once again. A part of him wanted to grab the diary and read it. But then he remembered what had happened the last time a mysterious diary had found its way to him. It had belonged to Voldemort, the evillest and darkest wizard in a century. The group decided it best to hand over the box to an adult.
After Mr. Weasley had thoroughly examined the diary, spending several minutes poking it with his wand as he muttered incantation after incantation, he had come to the conclusion that there was nothing alarming about the book. The red haired man handed Harry the wooden box containing the diary, much to his wife's displeasure, who still thought it to be dangerous.
The Weasley clan, Harry, Hermione along with Sirius, Remus and Hestia Jones were seated around the long table in the basement kitchen. Harry looked to his godfather, who was sitting one arm thrown over the back of his chair. He was leaning back on the chair's back legs, with a bored expression on his face. Harry got the impression Sirius would rather be anywhere else than here in this moment, debating the dangerousness of a diary.
Ignoring his godfather's dim mood, Harry eagerly accepted the box and opened it once more. Inside was the brown leather diary, bound by leather strings of the same colour. His previous experience with diaries made him wary. Nevertheless, curiosity won him over. Picking up, he turned the diary over. In faded golden letters, the brown leather was engraved with Victoria McNealy. He had never heard that name before.
"Victoria McNealy", Harry called out loud. He heard a sharp intake of breath to his left. Looking up, he found his godfather staring at the diary as if he were seeing it for the first time.
Sirius reached out for the diary, and harry handed it to him, before asking, "did you know her?"
But Sirius ignored him. He fingered the golden letter of Victoria's name as if he were caressing a loved one. Confused, Harry sought out Remus for clarification.
"McNealy? Didn't she disappear shortly before You Now Who's demise?" Hestia Jones asked.
Harry turned to Jones, now frustrated with his father's best friends. "Did you know her?"
"Of course. We went to school together."
"There must be something in that diary. Why else would it appear out of nowhere?" Hermione wondered from the corner of the kitchen. She absentmindedly rubbed Crookshanks orange fur.
"Well there's only one way to find out," Harry held out his hand for to retrieve the diary from Sirius, who had been staring at it all the while. Reluctantly, Sirius handed the book back to him. Harry unwrapped the leather strings impatiently, setting them aside on the dining table. He opened the diary to a blank page.
Sighing, he flipped through the diary but found it to be completely bare of words. "There's nothing in it." Harry explained unnecessarily.
"Maybe its like You-Know-Who's diary. You have to write stuff in order for it reveal its content," Suggested Ginny. She left the kitchen, and was back a few minutes later with a bottle of ink and a quill. She handed the items to Harry, who dipped the wooden quill in the black ink before bringing it over to the diary.
On a crisp white page, he wrote, as he had done so many years ago: Hello, my name is Harry Potter. Harry held his breath while he waited for the diary to absorb the ink and reply. But nothing happened. His scrawny writing remained as it was.
Huffing, Harry threw the quill down on the table. Pushing back his chair, Harry got up and moved away.
"It's nothing but an empty diary." He exclaimed angrily.
"It's not empty," a quiet deep voice answered. Sirius had finally spoken. "Its not empty," he repeated. "She always wrote in it." He explained, also confirming that he knew this Victoria.
"She wouldn't have wanted just anyone to know its secrets. She must have charmed it." At this point, Harry wasn't sure whether Sirius was talking to him or to himself.
Sirius drew out his wand from his pocket and walked over to the abandoned diary. He pointed his wand at the bare pages, and said in a clear voice, "I solemnly swear I'm up to no good".
As soon as Sirius had finished his Marauder incantation, a screen of bright light had suddenly erupted from the margins of the diary. The large screen reminded Harry of a cinema. Not that he had ever been to one, the Dursleys had made sure of that. But he had seen it in movies and TV shows.
Soon enough, the bright screen of light was now glowing with colours. A picture had appeared on it. A moving picture.
"Oh, it's like a film," Hermione exclaimed excitedly.
"A what?" Almost everyone in the kitchen asked in unison.
"A film. It's like uh-a collection of…moving pictures. Muggles use it to tell a story." Hermione went to rotate the diary on the table so that everyone could get a proper view of the movie screen.
Harry had no idea what was happening. But like everyone else, he went along. Grabbing a seat next to George…or Fred, he sat down. On the screen, a middle aged man with dark hair was wrapping some books in parchment for his customer. He stood behind a cash register in a large book store. Harry watched as the customer, a young boy, handed the man muggle money.